[1] Their second studio release since the return of vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith in 1999, the album features the band's first-ever fully acoustic track, "Journeyman", as well as "New Frontier", their only song co-written by drummer Nicko McBrain.

The band first confirmed that they would be working on a follow-up to 2000's Brave New World with producer Kevin Shirley on 27 November 2002, announced alongside a small set of European tour dates for the following year.

[2] On 6 January 2003, Shirley confirmed via his website that the band would begin recording that month,[3] followed by the announcement that the basic tracks had been completed on 5 February[4] and that the release was to be mixed in April.

[5] On 31 May, the band announced that the album, recorded at Sarm West Studios, would be entitled Dance of Death,[6] after which the release date was issued on 17 June.

During "Dance of Death", Bruce Dickinson would wear theatrical masks and a cape while moving around the stage; at the end he would dress as the Grim Reaper for the final chorus.

[8] During "Paschendale", Dickinson would wear a traditional British Infantryman trench coat and helmet (although he revealed in the Death on the Road documentary that it was actually Hungarian),[1] as worn during World War I, and the set would be decorated with barbed wire.

[8][13] According to guitarist Janick Gers, the album's title track was inspired by the final scene of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal, at the end of which "these figures on the horizon start doing a little jig, which is the dance of death".

According to Dickinson on the Death on the Road live album, it is about "the whole process of writing and being a musician",[15] although Mick Wall describes it as "a wistful tale of carpe diem".

[14] The song was originally recorded with electric instruments, however, as Dickinson states, "after all the battering that we've given the listener over the last hour of music it just seemed right to play out with something totally unexpected and left field.